Don't Love Anything That Can Be Taken

I Usually Do At Least A Dozen Drafts And Progressively Make More-conscious Decisions. Because I've Always Believed Stories Are Closer To Poems Than Novels, I Spend A Lot Of Time On The Story's Larger Rhythms, Such As Sentence And Paragraph Length, Placement Of Flashbacks And Dialogue.

I Love Learning About Different Dialects And I Own All Sorts Of Regional And Time-period Slang Dictionaries. I Often Browse Through Relevant Ones While Writing A Story. I Also Read A Lot Of Diaries And Oral Histories.

As I Get Older I Find Myself Thinking It All Begins With Shakespeare.

I Think I Had A Particular Moment When I Was 15 Years Old. I Read 'crime And Punishment,' And That Book Just, I Think, More Than Any Other Book Made Me Want To Be A Writer, 'cause It Was The First Time That I Hadn't Just Entered A Book, But A Book Had Entered Me.

The Woman Doesn't Look Up. It's As If She's Deaf. Maybe She Is. Maybe She's Like The Cambodian Women I've Read About, The Ones Who Witnessed So Many Atrocities That They Have Willed Themselves Blind. Maybe That's What You Have To Do Sometimes To Survive. You Kill Off Part Of Yourself, Your Hearing Or Eyesight, Your Capacity For Hope.